Living The Truth

I started a literary, self-help journey of sorts today - or, at least that's what it's been coined by both Howard Stern and the author of the book himself. The title of the book is the same as that of this entry. It's all about finding the pain, disappointment and other various pieces of the past that we, as human beings, tend to repress, re-write in our own minds and / or otherwise "forget" in an attempt to extinguish anything and everything we either don't want to be a part of our selves or refuse to acknowledge as parts or ourself.

I'm an angry man and I tend to hide that anger (or try to) in often-lame attempts at humor, surface-type relationships without any attempt or ability to dive deeper, booze - and the funny thing just this second is how long it took me to actually write that word. I sat here for a few moments thinking about whether or not i wanted to write it, whether or not I thought it was actually valid and pertinent and important enough to put it down. I'm a whiskey drinker, not a booze drinker. I grabbed my Type O Negative flask this morning before I left and filled it with some George Dickel Bourbon so I'd be able to have a drink on the train ride home - and yet, right now, while i was sitting here writing this ntry, I had to pause in order to decide whether or not it was important enough to jot down booze as a means of coping. Anyway, that's the kind of thing I'm hoping to get to the root of, to accept who I am and why I do things the way I do. To identify the pieces of my personality that sit outside the concept of the ideal ME and face them while simultaneously facing the not-so-honest pieces of the ME I present to the world and telling them to get the fuck lost.

Damn. That's a tall order and I've got some work ahead of me. The author, Dr. Keith Ablow says up front he's going to make things worse before they get better (or at least stimulate enough emotion and self-exploartion to feel the lows more profoundly, I guess), if he's doing his part of the job successfully. Ok. I can handle that. I think I can, anyway. I expect that I'll confront past-demons I've avoided for years and probably decades. The payoff, I hope, will be a more positive outlook toward life, fatherhood, marriage, work and friendship. And actually, not just outlook - approach and involvement.

Friendship. Yeah. That's a word that used to hold such joy for me in the past, when I was a kid. And has taken on a surface meaning at best when it comes to my interactions with others as I've grown, if only because I don;t take the time to maintain and develop friendships outside of work or home.

I need to go pick up a notebook from the General Store. That'll help with the exercises.

Catch ya soon.